NXNE Portlands

North by Northeast (or NXNE) is an annual music and arts festival held each June in Toronto.  The festival's main focus is live music, particularly emerging talent. The 2016 festival was held at within an enormous outdoor venue in the Portlands featuring 2 opposing stages separated by 650 Ft of hard surface.

Denegri Bessai Studio was given the opportunity to animate the central area between the festival stages. A series of vibrant pneumatic columns were created at the intersections of a linear network of softscape ramps, which were tethered by cables to stacks of adjacent wood palettes that became seating. The columns were coupled at the top where they provide shade and resting space for concert goers while simultaneously acting as a beacon for the transient crowds while the green softscape runways acted as continuous picnic blankets, organizing circulation and facilitating leisure areas.

Since the mid 20th century, inflatable structures have held the promise of a new and temporal infrastructure for the city. Versatile and dynamic, inflatables leverage alternative materials and forms to the concrete and planar glass of the contemporary city. Their light-weight, versatile formal qualities lend themselves to temporary events, their fleeting nature is contradicted by the people that encounter them, then removed just as quickly as they were erected.